More Room in a Broken Heart
The True Adventures of Carly Simon
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
A love song to an American icon: the first full-length biography of Carly Simon, from an acclaimed music journalist who has known her for decades
Carly Simon has won two Grammys and an Academy Award, and her albums have sold more than forty million copies. Her music has touched countless lives since her debut in the 1970s, yet her own life story has remained unpublished-until now. Tapping private archives, family interviews, and a forty-year friendship with the legend herself, Stephen Davis at last captures Carly Simon's extraordinary journey from shy teenager to superstar. More Room in a Broken Heart candidly covers everything her fans want to know, including:
Growing up with her father, publishing mogul Richard Simon The Bob Dylan turning point that launched her career The real story behind "You're So Vain" Carly's severe stage fright (she's the only musical guest to pretape an SNL segment) Romantic involvements with Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, and Cat Stevens How Carly and James Taylor went from being pop music's reigning couple to independent souls living at opposite ends of Massachusetts Surviving breast cancer Her recent financial and spiritual crises
Along the way, Davis vividly takes readers back to some of the most powerful eras in American music history and delivers a tribute worthy of the artist and her loyal fans, who know that nobody does it better than Carly Simon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rock and roll biographer Davis was granted Simon's full participation and approval for this involved, revelatory but restrained and courteous look back at her full, rich life as a singer and folk-rock icon and as a result the work often sounds gooey and promotional. Davis knowledgeably fleshes out the early folk scene, when the Simon Sisters, Lucy and Carly daughters of the co-founder of Simon & Schuster, Dick Simon, and private school educated young ladies in matching dresses from Riverdale, N.Y. won their big breakthrough in 1964 playing "Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod" on the national TV show Hootenanny. When Lucy got married, Carly Simon took off on her own, and despite crippling stage fright, fear of flying, and a residual stutter, managed to secure a record deal with Jac Holzman at Electra, in 1970. In a burst of creative collaboration with lyricist Jake Brackman, she proved from the get-go that she was a talented songwriter, marketed in the 1970s as a kind of feminist troubadour, with hit after hit, attracting famous boyfriends like James Taylor, soon to be her husband, and winning a Grammy in 1972 for Best New Artist. Later her music would be dubbed "shrink couch rock," but her achievements over the decades are remarkable, plentiful, and well earned. Chronicler Davis has an inconsistent habit of starting chapters in the present tense, but he possesses a fluid, natural style, and there are promised photographs (not seen) by Carly's brother, Peter Simon.
